


grateful for the gift of memory

by tamsinb



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, Middle-Aged Lesbian!Son Scotch, Middle-Aged Lesbian!York Silk, POV Second Person, S10DX, butterscotch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29006112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamsinb/pseuds/tamsinb
Summary: Son Scotch waits for York Silk to come home.
Relationships: Son Scotch/York Silk
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	grateful for the gift of memory

**Author's Note:**

> york silk and son scotch are lesbians in this one, york uses she/her and scotch uses he/they.
> 
> title taken from [i remember](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYo2ryZ3wUs) by molly drake

* * *

There's a houseplant in the windowsill and you care for it when you can't for her.

It has been two seasons since you began watering it daily.

You try your best not to hope that today will mark its end because you know what hope can do. You know what it did to you last time. And you fail, as you knew you would, and even as you feel hope you feel its counterpart rise in you, and you are able to put words more easily to the notion that even being disappointed once again is not the worst outcome. You know there is an end to today that dashes your hopes for good, and means you will never see her again.

You don’t watch the television. You thought you would, felt like you owed it to her, but you can’t bear to do to yourself again what it did to you last time and so you sip your namesake drink as you wander into the living room. The room lights up in the evening sun, red but not like it is where she is, and you think of how Silk always appreciated the irony where you never could, the irony in the fact that you find peace most easily from long slow sips of Scotch.

There is a scrapbook in your house and it is to you what the plant is to Silk. Its leather cover feels more like your skin than the actual, and when you would walk in on her cradling it you feel yourself held in those arms. It is why you water the plant, to transmit some comfort across space and through barrier, that same action at a distance. You find the scrapbook in its drawer.

You sit down in your body that grows more tired and more comfortable by the day, placing yourself gently onto the soft leather of the couch. You don’t need to open the scrapbook to remember, you can flip its pages in your mind.

You don’t think about the look in her eyes when you stood unable to look away from the screen this day one year prior and saw your love made malformed in her. You think instead of the delight in her eyes when she learned what team you were on, her cocky grin as she chirped ‘Bang! Bang!’ finger guns akimbo and flexing in glee. You don’t think of how she deadpanned the same gesture into the camera as she stood at the plate for a team that wasn’t hers, pointing straight through the screen to aim you down her sights.

You think of the picture of the two of you close, at a party, a Fridays party, after she’d held off her nosey boisterous teammates who only meant well. She’d joined you in the corner and asked you if she’d looked cool rescuing you and you called her your dork.

“Yeah!” she beamed, “that’s what they call me! On account of me being a dork.”

“No. My dork. I meant it with the emphasis on  _ my.” _

She giggled, bashful. “That’s right… All yours.”

You don’t think of the paralyzing rage you felt when you saw those words repeated in red.

The remote sits on the couch. Of course you think of these things, how could you not? And just when you decide the not knowing is worse, that you need to- at least see, at least confirm, just as your hand brushes the hard plastic, there’s a knock at the door.

You don’t move because you can’t. A fumbling and another knock. The weight of possibility clamps your throat shut. A clattering from outside as the spare key is retrieved from under the planter and- and who else would know about that? and the door opens and you can’t bring yourself even to crane your head around to look and so you don’t know for sure until footsteps start and coming around the wall it’s-

And her hair has grown out long over the two years and its usual casual gray has turned stark white, and she stands slumped, leaning away, not solid straightup like usual but- but it’s her isn’t it? It’s her, it’s Silk, and, and you don’t even dare to assume and you lock eyes and they look far away, sunk back a thousand miles back, but your eyesight has always been a strong point and you can see them unclouded, glimmering in the way they always have. You take a breath and wait a thousand lifetimes to exhale it.

“Welcome back,” you say.

“Yeah,” she says, and she glances around the room before her eyes settle back on you. “I’m home.”

*******

You know the first thing she’d want to do. She always hated with uncharacteristic vehemence the feeling of freeflowing hair, so much so that she’d gotten you doing it to your own hair. The two of you had sported matching buzzcuts for the past several seasons.

You gingerly lean her head forward, treating her like a fragile ceramic, and her body responds much the same and she grunts as her stiff tendons move, as though she’s barely moved outside of that damned shell. She’d always been so tall and you’d worried every day at the size of her encasement - no taller than anyone else’s even though she’d need it, your most frequent worry just that she might feel some comfort in there, feel through the shell her favorite pillow from the couch you’d brought when you first visited…

The razor marks its first path through her hair and the sight of the brittle hair hitting the floor marking white against white sends a release of tension through Silk that you can feel as you hold her.

“Do you want to dye it?” you ask, pulling the razor through slowly gently and tracking another strip of hair gone. “You always liked pink.” Maybe the reminder is inane but somehow you feel scared not to make it.

“Maybe later,” she answers. “This is plenty for now, I think.”

You nod and soon the hair is gone and the smooth contour of her head sits unadorned and you can’t keep yourself from gently running your hand across it. You can’t even tell the color this way, the hair seems clear and colorless when cut this short.  _ That’s how polar bears work, _ your brain supplies you,  _ their fur is actually clear it just  _ looks _ white… _ and the contrast surprises you and startles you into a bit of laughter. Silk jumps.

“Wh- what was that about?”

“Oh. Sorry.” Sheepishly: “I was thinking about bears.”

She turns her head to look at you and you can see her working hard to figure something out before her expression softens. “I’m glad you’re still just as much of a weirdo.”

You laugh and she doesn’t, but she manages a small smile and that’s more than enough.

*******

You clean up and neatly bag the hair and head back out to the living room. Silk sits on the couch with the scrapbook open, fingers moving over pictures like she was trying to engrave them onto her fingertips.

You walk up behind her and wrap your arms around her shoulders and she flinches. You pull back quickly and a muttered apology stalls on your tongue. She shakes her head horizontally, then pauses for a moment and nods. You lean down again and gently slide your arms across her and she shudders but accepts and you wonder how long it’s been since she’s been touched by anything yielding.

The picture she’s touching is an old one, from when you’d made the playoffs with the Spies one of those early seasons. She’s beaming there and she looks so proud of you and despite yourself you look a little proud too, although you can’t tell whether it’s because of your team’s success or just to be standing next to someone so captivating. The picture highlights the height difference and you have to smile a little at how small you look next to her, how soft and undefined your body looked back then before the hormones had helped you ease into your body like a warm swimming pool.

You place your hand on hers over the image and kiss her lightly on the neck.

*******

It’s evening and the television is turned quiet, reruns of some old flashy show. You’d always preferred your record player but Silk never seemed able to relax fully with stimulation only on the audio band. You lean against her as she watches, feeling the contour of the favorite Hawaiian shirt you’d changed her into, and - she always was thin but now it feels like you could pass a hand through her, like any moment you’ll feel the front and back of her shirt pressed together, contact between two sheets of thin fabric without anything between them.

“I’m glad you’re back,” you say, if only to drown out your thoughts.

She’s silent for a moment and you look up at her face and her lips are pressed together. “Am… I back? I don’t. I don’t think I know where I am…”

And you don’t trust what your voice will say so you place your hand over hers and feel them clasp together, and you do your best to intercede, turn her wringing into a clasping, and she starts to blink like tears are coming but none do. She turns to look at you at last.

“I’m sorry… I know you wanted me back, I know you waited. But I don’t know if I’m all the way there yet.” She manages a shaky smile and you feel that moment of vision find its own private neuron cluster in your brain and set up permanent residence.

“I’m no stranger to waiting, Silk,” you say, pushing a smile to your forefront as well. “Take as long as you need. I’ll be right here.”

*******

You wake up and you’re alone on the couch. It doesn’t feel unusual and you hate that it doesn’t and it takes you a moment to realize that it shouldn’t- and you bolt up and look around, leather protesting and your leg banging the table.

But Silk is there, in the kitchen. Back turned. You sigh, and only then does the pain from your leg reach you. You wince.

“Good morning,” says Silk, hearing you. You mumble something in return. “How do you like your eggs?”

Oh, she doesn’t- well, that’s okay. “Um, you always made them over easy for me? And I usually liked them that way.” You suppose you’ll just have to get used to reminding her these things.

“No, no! I mean, like,  _ how do you like your eggs,” _ and she turns and she’s grinning, and she has the slight cock to her hip that she always did when she was about to say something truly, truly stupid- “like, fried? Scrambled? Or ferti-”

“Oh my god  _ oh _ my god. Don’t you even dare finish that,” and your hand grasps a pillow next to you and you judge the distance from where you are to her and try to decide if breaking a bottle or two might actually be worth it. “You’re a menace, Silk, you’re impossible, you’re a million other things and more!”

And she chuckles at your expense and turns back to flick on the burner and starts making eggs you don’t even care  _ what _ kind they are now and- despite everything you’re smiling. And your heart is pounding and for the first time in so long you feel as though the air around you weren’t hanging listless and empty.

On reflex your eyes flit to the windowsill and find the plant already watered.


End file.
